his head is a sea of glass
by Kuro49
Summary: Herc&Chuck. He thinks he is simple, but this isn't that. Or Chuck only gets into fights just so Herc will hold him back.


There is a touch-starved!Chuck prompt on the kinkmeme that I initially wanted to write for but then the fic quickly ran away from me. And then this happened. (I swear I will work on something of the fluffier variety but goddamn, Chuck's daddy issues is like a black hole I keep getting sucked into.)

XXX

**his head is a sea of glass**

XXX

He is brash and young, and he learns too fast. He is a child with a kind of focus that can save the world (and the terrible thing is that he does and he comes back breathing harder for it too).

He throws a punch and catches his fist all wrong on the other boy's face. Chuck doesn't bruise easily but there is a pain that flares all along his arm when he flexes his fingers. He doesn't look down, but if he did he will see the bloodied knuckles that will turn an ugly shade of blue and black in a day or two.

Chuck doesn't even know what they are arguing about.

Not that it really matters because this is him acting out, issues on display since day one, shouting at the world to blame him for this mess. It doesn't take long, it never does, and then Hercules Hansen is grabbing him by the shoulder, bodily pushing him back from the fight with a kind of grip that hurts a little bit more than the throbbing pain in his clenched fists.

He wants it this way.

Because this is as close to a hug as he'll get from his old man.

.

It's twisted, and probably more than a little bit fucked up.

But they never admit to otherwise.

.

Herc doesn't exactly know when he actually figures it out, but it has probably taken much too long, and he is probably just about much too late to mend this thing. The man hears himself, and he sounds like a goddamn broken record when he tears his son from the other boy, manhandles his own kid from this, whatever _this_ is.

"Goddamnit, Chuck." He bites out, and it sounds all wrong, like this is actually the kid's fault instead of years and years of failed parenting on his behalf. The glare Chuck throws him is cutting. He takes what he needs, and it has always been this way. "Cut it out!"

His hands tighten, not that it helps, not that anything makes up for everything he's done wrong since the start. (And the problem is that he still has no idea what he could have done instead.)

So he puts his hand over Chuck's chest when he doesn't have to, grip the curve of his shoulder with the other when he can hold him off with one arm. It's in the push and pull of their steady fight, where neither wins but neither loses.

He doesn't let go, makes the grip that much harder, engrains the heat of human skin over shirt and skin and flesh and blood.

Herc stares him down until the heart beating beneath his fingertips slow and the anger is no longer a palpable thing.

.

The Jaeger pilots have a word for it.

_Ghost drifting._

.

Resentment is a terrible thing.

But Chuck doesn't actually hate his father like everyone else in the Shatterdome thinks. (He used to, he really did.) But the Drift doesn't really allow for that, not when he learns that it has either been him or his mother. And if Herc has saved his mother instead, she wouldn't have forgiven him either.

But he shrugs off the tight grip, and if he leans in for a fraction longer than he should before getting out of his father's grasp, well, Hercules Hansen won't be the one to say anything.

"Don't, dad."

He doesn't defend himself. He doesn't need to. Because while the Drift is silence, his thoughts are loud and intruding in the headspace the two of them share when they are up in Striker, all broken glass glittering beneath an Australian sun.

He turns to walk away, Max trotting along at his heels, he hates himself for that moment of weakness. For wanting more of his father's hands, calloused and scarred and bloody from all the fights he's been in from a time before Chuck is born and everything changes.

Chuck can't see his dad watching him as he stomps off. But he can feel the full weight of that gaze settling in the back of his head. (And everyone else can call it what they want, he only knows it as a terrible kind of co-dependence where he wakes up with his dad's head in his own. It's a laugh and a sob in wait on the flat of his tongue.)

.

Chuck doesn't fuss.

This isn't that.

This is anything but that.

(Still, this or anything he could have done doesn't undo the fact that his dad is _hurt_.)

.

They are kind, but never to each other. And it's not even about a show of weakness but a show of hand, of revealing secrets after secrets because there is no room to hide. His mind is not his own, not since he has been fifteen years old. And if Chuck can ever come to admit this, out loud, he likes it better this way.

That connection that links him to memories of a version of his mother he never had, of experiences he won't ever have. He likes that, and he comes to need it too.

Because sometimes, all he wants is to dig his fingertips into the jagged glass where their minds meet and meld just to get a reaction out of his dad that is more than a sad, loaded stare from across the mess hall table.

Because sometimes he likes that even when he leaves the Conn-pod, Chuck can still feel that his head isn't an empty void.

.

The pilots have another word for that.

_Drift hangover._

.

They are born surrounded by the ocean, he has lived with the scent of salt in the air all his life. He plans to die at the bottom of the Pacific because he doesn't know how to live any other way. Chuck is a soldier, like his dad (and all those other Hansens before them).

And they can call it what they want but a hangover is not drunk, and he needs that to get over the fear because no one walks away like this.

And it's not fair that the last time he drifts, he won't be with his father.

.

But they say their dues like it isn't the end.

Chuck tells him, "I know."

Because he does.

.

They are all scars and fading tattoos made at eighteen, weather worn leather instead of velveteen.

They mark their kills and wear their dog tags around their necks because they don't know normality any other way. There is never finesse, just speed and a wordless grace rubbed into the dirt when they fall back to their need (to not talk, not think, and maybe for this moment, not be that father and son dual that the world seems to eat up).

Herc hears radio silence, and then Striker's blip disappears altogether on the monitors.

.

It's a quiet war, devastation on all fronts, when it comes to the Hansens.

Even when the Breach is closed and Chuck comes home alive.

.

Chuck doesn't die, but he feels like he should have when he wakes up, head empty and all on his own. Herc feels otherwise but without the Drift, he can't imagine how to even begin forming those words his son needs to hear.

It's losing and winning all in one hand.

It's words that get stuck in his throat, halfway to admission because they never know what to say. And it isn't like they are about to start now.

But when Herc reaches over, over _Max_, and touches the back of his son's neck to bring him close, Chuck doesn't move away. He stills for a moment, glancing up. And for the longest time, Charles Hansen is grasping at straws because this isn't how they work. But then he digs his fingers in and feels beach glass instead, weathered through the years and smooth when he finally leans in to the touch.

And it's simple to have this too.

XXX Kuro


End file.
